Ephemeral Carpets & Canopies

The textures and colours of the canopy alters throughout each season, as do the textures and colours of the ground plane in this ancient, semi-natural, oak-lime woodland.

This coppice wood of 20.8 ha was recorded in the Domesday Book 1086 and may have existed c.500 AD. The structure and composition of much of the wood is indicative of its ancient status. There is extensive ancient coppice of small-leaved lime Tilia cordata, with stools up to 5m in diameter, and sessile oak Quercus petraea, much of it former coppice with surviving stools up to 2 m in diameter. The presence of Tilia in quantity here is probably an indication that the wood has been an enclosed coppice wood with very restricted or no grazing throughout its recorded history.

Spring path

Autumn path

Spring carpet

Summer carpet

Spring

Autumn

Winter

Often it is said time is the fourth dimension. Nowhere is this more evident than in the landscape.

This means the materials we use to design our spaces alter over time: they grow in ways we didn’t expect, they grow at rates we don’t anticipate and they decline over time. The materials can fruit, flower and seed.

Changes over time can both astonish and disappoint us, not only do whole environments alter over a long period of time but each individual species within the matrix has their own annual rhythm. Take a look at the Common Beech (Fagus sylvatica) to see how the leaves alone transfigure throughout the year – from pointy buds early in the year, to fresh flushes of lush green leaves and inconspicuous flowers, to colourful hues in the Autumn, to dry and brittle leaves left on over Winter until the pointy buds of Spring force them off to begin another year’s cycle.

(*Timings vary and depend on location)

 

Time is the Fourth Dimension

Feb/March

Early March

March

March

April

April to October

Early Autumn

Autumn

December